If you think you’re too old, too frail, or too unskilled to be of any use in building a Habitat for Humanity house, you’re wrong. Anyone over 18 can work on the build site; Habitat Fairfield County’s oldest on-site female volunteer is 82.

How did they find the courage to do it—challenge the racist order in the South in the 1960s? Who formed the strategy, who dared to take it out to some of the most racist Southern counties? In this forthright memoir, Judy Richardson gives us an insider’s look at the danger-ridden early years of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, “the only national civil rights movement led by young people.”

In Dr. Schwartz’s bereavement group for Chinese men, “They talk about sports—sports is a lifesaver. They talk about playing mahjongg. But eventually someone will ask, ‘How do you make the rice for one person?’ Another will say, ‘The loneliest time is before I go to sleep at night, and do you sleep in the middle of the bed?’ Supposedly they don’t like to talk about their feelings, but they do, they do.”

Sheehy’s memoir is the tale of a tempestuous romance; a compelling look into the first stirrings of female revolt in the 1960s and ’70s; and the story of a reporter who throws herself into danger so persistently that her book is clearly the blueprint for a screenplay.

Since some domestic abusers vengefully track down their escaped partners, Second Chance Employment Services works with the Department of Justice to “change anything that needs to be changed to make a woman untraceable,” the agency’s founder says. “We had a woman who had to change her name and Social Security number three times.”

“I have ‘habits’ that make me feel less anxious: I drive the same route every day, park in the same spot, eat the same lunch, leave at the same time, and take the same route home. I don’t know if I can function if I have to change anything in my life.”

This, I guessed, was a small band of activists who had grit and optimism, given that they’re fighting so massive an opponent—the entrenched, politically powerful coal industry. I found myself wondering, “Who ARE those guys?”